East London, a restaurant that served English cuisine in Berlin (now closed down). Photograph: Timothy Fadek
In "Berliners frustrated over restaurants where no German is spoken." Philp Oltermann (2017) says people in Berlin, the capital city of Germany, and one of the most attractive cities in the world. feel a sense of frustration that waiter and waitress are not speaking German. Thus, some German members of parliament write a letter to the ministry of Germany to support the use of German. Merkel's chief of staff responses to keep in German, French and English. In order to improve the country, there should concern about the diversity of languages in the country. Conversely, the majority of the people in Berlin are quite happy with this. The reason is Berlin is one of the big capital businesses, so the city should improve their ability to speak English. Now Berlin is becoming a bilingual city.
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My response
It is, now, very common that English is becoming more and more powerful on every part of the world. In the article, the author tells in Frech we would not see people speak English much. I do not know how true it is. I am quite surprised that there is a place that people try not to speak English. I infer that they have a strong economy, so they might not care whether the customer can speak Frech or not. (You come to my country, so you should speak our language.) In Thailand, there a lot of English school are opening right now in Thailand. People are more and more interested in learning English, yes, it is very important to have English language abilities. People can make use of English to increase their salary.
Back to Berlin, I have never been there, but I have heard from my friend that more and more people in Germany can speak English. Their sound is easier to listen comparing with French. (I quite agree with it.) I have met many Germans when I was studying German in Thailand. Most of the people I met speak English very well.
For me, It is not a big deal that waiter or waitress in Berlin speak English. This brought me a question that how important it is to learn other languages? Learning language is hard and also long-term work. So what we get back is not worthwhile. Most people learn a language because of its pay something back. The minority of people learn a language because of culture or try to understand particular culture truly, which something that people not likely to pay for.
Learning language is still very crucial to people not only to communicate but also to understand cultures, which is what I concern most. However, to make it more effective people should learn it in the early of your study due to the abilities to learn language process very well when we are young. So government should concern that learning language in the basic educational program
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My question for readers
What do you think if your home town is becoming a bilingual society? Is it help you to improve abilities to speak that new language or it make you no longer belong to the society?
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- Oltermann, P. (2017, August 18). Berliners frustrated over restaurants where no German is spoken. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/14/berlin-restaurants-german-english
Thank you, Stamp, it's very interesting point. I have a lot of Russian friends in German, and It really surprises me - many of them don't speak German. They live in Russian area, they work for Russian companies, they have only Russian friends. Or we can talk about me. I live in Thailand for four years. Do I speak Thai? No. In Russia, it is difficult to meet a person on the street who speaks English. In France, people also do not like English, and a small number of French speak English. I want to say that much depends on the mentality of the country. But in 21st century this is normal speak at least two languages. And it's not normal that I do not know the language of the country in which I live.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI believe that people should speak languages of the country in which they live, but as I read your comment describing examples from you friends. It changes my mind, but not entirely. That is why I still study Germany even I found it super hard, and I still cannot imagine myself speak German as I speak English. but I have never imagined myself writing English as I write now as well.
DeleteSo I have some question to you, what might be the reason that makes you study Thai? I just curious that how to live in particular country without the ability to speak their language. For me, it is very hard, because I think about working with native speakers as well, so I have to speak that language for the sake of my work.
Yes, it's hard for me to! But, as you know, I was living on Koh Chang almost four years. We moved to Bkk just 4-5 months ago. On Koh Chang I didn't have any opportunity to study Thai. This island still lives in the 90s. I hope that I'll start to study Thai in this year.
DeleteAlthough not all of my colleagues at work do, most of my foreign friends in Bangkok do speak Thai at least well enough for daily business. I realise when friends and family come to visit how limiting it is not to speak the local language. It's obviously possible, since so many do, to get by in Bangkok without speaking any Thai, but it's much easier if you do speak at least some Thai.
DeleteLast week, I had a problem with my internet connection, and although the call centre staff at True all speak English well, the technicians who actually come to fix the problem seem to speak no English. It was very useful for me to be able to speak to them directly in Thai, even to read and write a few short messages (they were the reason I took two calls during class last week, something I almost never do, but I was expecting that call, and it was important.)
And a couple of my oldest and closest Thai friends speak little or no English. If I had not learned some Thai, what would not now be old friends, to my great loss.
Unfortunately, Thai is extremely difficult for me, being so unlike English and such a mix of other languages as to make it as complex as English is. After 20 years, I still wish I would spend a bit more time working on improving my Thai.
Tomorrow ...
Your blog reminds me of a topic I learnt from an english class few months ago. It's about languages and power. In the past, when any language becomes popular it means the country who own that language is very powerful. As you can see, USA, Australia, and Canada, they all use English. It links to the history tha, the UK was very very poweful in colonial era. In fact, it was not only the UK, but also Protuguese and Spain which are use as an official language in south America.
ReplyDeleteAbout your question, I think it is important to learn a second language thease days. It's a skill that can give you more opportunity in careers. A good way to improve your language skills is making yourself surrounded with that language. So I think living in the bilingual society will help us improve the second language a lot.
I thought something similar as I read Stamp's post. Sadly, I agree with him that only a "minority of people learn a language because of culture or try to understand particular culture truly," although I don't actually have any statistics for this belief, so maybe I'm wrong.
DeleteOne of the languages I've studied is Latin, and the reasons were not particularly practical in the sense that it brings material success in the 21st century, but it did become the international language for 2,000 years because of it was the language of the Roman Empire.
But now that I think about it, Greek (the ancient version) might be an exception to this. Alexander's empire did not last long enough for Greek to gain the hold that Latin later did, but Greek has also been a major language for Western culture and civilization for more than 2,000 years because of the culture it encodes: it is Homer, not the Bible and other Middle Eastern despotism, that is the foundation of Western civilization, along with with Plato, Herodotus, Euripides and the other great Greeks that Romans fell in love with as they were busily conquering their neighbours.
Sadly, it is possible today to graduate from high school in the West without ever having read even Homer, who is at least as bloodily violent and sex filled, both his gods and the humans, as any super violent modern video game or action film! But Homer tends to be far superior in artistic merit, which is why he has exerted such a powerful influence on the West for almost 3,000 years.
One final comment on Stamp's post: the other thing I thought of immediately was Dean & Deluca, which is a pain when I take Thai friends who don't know English there to eat. I like eating there, but the menu's are English only, and the staff seem to speak English by default, at least at the Mahanakorn branch, which is the one I usually go to.
ReplyDeleteThe ten year-year-old son of one of my friends solves this by always ordering lobster with one or two regular side dishes, and by pointing to the ice-creams or cake he would like, so I guess it's not an insurmountable problem.